Words of Wisdom - P

Paid from the neck down.

Pain is brief - pride is forever.

Pain is weakness leaving the body.

Pain makes man think; thought makes man wise; wisdom makes life endurable.

Pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until in our despair there comes a wisdom through the awful grace of God.

Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.

Paintings are lies that tell the truth.

Pandering to people who don’t pay attention

Paralyze their resistance with your persistence.

Parenting is not a popularity contest – but grandparenting is.

Parents: I was once their dream; now they are mine.

Part of being an adult is developing the capacity to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over.

Part of the problem with perfectionism is that, by nature, you’re always failing.

Participating in a gun buy-back program because you think that criminals have too many guns is like having yourself castrated because you think your neighbors have too many kids.

Passion without precision is chaos.

Past results are no guarantee of future performance.

Past sins never vanish, they simply wait.

Patience is a professional liability.

Patience is an overrated virtue.

Patience to go slow to go fast.

Patience will achieve more than force.

Patton:  Don’t like to pay twice for same real estate.

Pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend.

Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.

Paying for his own beating.

Peeing on the electric fence.

Peerspective.

Pentimento:  The paint becomes opaque and you can see beneath the paint the lines that were in the layers down below.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are.  I don't believe in circumstances.  The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

People are disturbed not by what happens to them, but by their view of what happens to them. (Epictetus)

People are herd animals – heat begets heat.

People are more important than things.

People are most afraid of things (like technology) that they depend on, but can’t entirely control

People are not afraid of change.  They fear the unknown.

People are starving for spontaneity.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.

People die for these little pieces of cloth.

People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.

People do not lack strength; they lack will.

People do what you inspect, not what you expect.

People don’t always know where they’re going; they just know they don’t want to go there alone.

People don’t buy what you do; people buy why you do it.

People don't care who made the first one.  They only want to know who makes the best one. 

People don’t change when they see the light, they change when they feel the heat.

People don’t embrace change for the sake of change.  They have to believe in it.

People don’t know what they like. They only like what they know.

People don’t know what they want until they’ve seen it.

People don't know why they come to work until they don't have to come to work.

People don’t leave jobs; they leave managers.

People don’t like change, but they can manage change. They can’t handle uncertainty. It’s the leader’s job to eliminate uncertainty.

People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.

People don’t want to be marketed to; they want to be communicated with.

People feel good or bad about a deal – not because of the money – but because of how you arrive at the deal.

People finding out they are not destined to be who they were convinced they were.

People get the history they deserve.

People get used to change when change is expected.

People hope vaguely but dread precisely.

People learn more from observation than from conversation.

People look at the living and wish for the dead.

People may or may not say what they mean.  But they always say something designed to get what they want.

Today people increasingly move from online (discovery) to on-air.

People need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed.

People never forget how you make them feel.

People never learn anything from a happy ending.

People notice only what you tell them to notice. And then only if you remind them.

People of ferocious emptiness.

People only see the things for which they are looking.

People overestimate what you can do in a year and underestimate what you can do in 10 years

People passionate about the premise and the promise.

People process the world through story.

People protect what they love. They love what they understand. They understand what they are taught. (Cousteau)

People quickly forget how fast you did a job-but they always remember how well you did it.

People respond to incentives.  The rest is commentary.

People respond well to people who are sure of what they want.

People see only what they are prepared to see.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

People seldom want to walk over you until you lie down.

People (entrepreneurs) always take their needs into consideration, but rarely their abilities.

People think luck is something that comes to them, but it never does.  You have to go out and catch it, and grab it with your own two hands.

People think that local media is this one-ton gorilla, but in fact, it’s 2,000 one-pound monkeys.

People today worship their work, work at their play, and play at their worship.

People want an eagle to lead them, but usually a chicken is running against a duck.

People want talent, but all too often they can't accept those things that go along with it.

People were blown around the country like dust on the wind.

People won’t remember what you said, but how you made them feel.

People who attack others aren’t wise, they’re afraid.

People who become legends in their own time usually have very little time left.

People who come from backgrounds suffused with love, praise and security often have the ability to dismiss criticism out of hand; people who don’t often devote great effort to building structures of refutation.

People who don’t experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection.

People who eat white bread have no dreams.

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours.  The inference is false; a gift confers no rights.

People who have no weaknesses are terrible.

People who have severe mental disabilities often argue with one another because arguing turns out to be one of the least cognitively challenging ways to interact.

People who live entirely by the fertility of their imagination are fascinating, brilliant, charming and not fit to live with.

People who make things happen, people who watch things happen, and people who wonder what happened.

People who once believed nothing could happen now believe anything can happen.

People who not only manage change, but have an appetite for it.

People who say they’re not afraid of anything are liars.  I’m afraid every time I go up there, not of being hit, but of failure.

People who can’t control their own emotions try to control other people’s behavior.

People who will lie for you will lie to you.

People wish to be liked, not endured.

People won’t behave if they have nothing to lose.

People work for money.  If you want loyalty, buy a dog.

Perception is discontinuous. You are what you are, whatever it is. And then there’s an aha! moment when people say you’re something else.

Perfect is nice, but no one can afford it. (Have a Plan B) (Zeno’s Paradox)

Perfect results count . . . not perfect processes.

Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem, in my opinion, to characterize our age.

Perfection of planning is a symptom of decay.  During a period of exciting discovery, growth and progress, there is no time to plan the perfect anything.  The time for that comes later, when all the important work has been done.

Perfectionism is often an excuse for procrastination.

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

Perhaps we miss the vision not because the vision is not there, but because we darken the window.

Permanently enshrined in the reptilian hall of fame.

Permission can’t hurt, but it rarely helps. You’ve got to sell your own story.

Permission to fail without acceptance of failure.

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

Perpetual self-improvement requires you to go on to the next big thing (for new “challenges”) even if doing so means being promoted beyond your natural abilities.

Persistence prevails when all else fails.

Persistence without empathy is a form of mental illness.

Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.

Personal data is the oil of the digital age.

Personality—an unbroken series of successful gestures.

Perspective is worth 30 IQ points.

Persuasion, not compulsion, is the only way to convince people.

Pessimism always sounds more sophisticated than optimism.

Pessimistic, joyless, deracinated, trapped in his own charmlessness and isolation, with a yearning vulnerability, a brooding self-hatred and an eye that could cut through any hint of phoniness or complacency, he had the psychological acuity of an artist – or a sociopath.

Pets:  a worry sponge.

Pets:  responsibility without romance.

Philosophy teaches hopelessness and hopelessness teaches comedy.

Photography is one percent talent and ninety-nine percent moving furniture.

Physical beauty is enormously, almost morbidly, important to me.

Pick a lane.

Pick any 2: Good, Cheap or Fast. Today Cheap and Fast = Good

Pick the future as against the past.

Pilot’s life:  Long periods of boredom interrupted by moments of sheer terror.

Pity doesn’t alleviate oppression; it simply assuages guilt.

Pity is not for the receiver, but for the giver.

Pity was invented by the weak.

Pixar: Story is the big picture. Story is process. Story is research.

Placate the people you can't avoid, and avoid the people you can't placate.

Plan for the worst, hope for the best.

Plan for the wreck instead of the ride (motorcycle advice)

Plan meticulously, execute mercilessly.

Plan with audacity and execute with vigor.

Plan the dive and dive the plan.

Planning for the future without a sense of history is like planting cut flowers.

Planning:  You want to avoid being at the airport when the ship arrives.

Planning is great; analysis is great.  But most of the time, when you get 80% of the facts, that’s really all you need.  We want our people to be unafraid of making mistakes.  The only time people don’t make mistakes is when they’re asleep.

Plans are useless but planning is indispensable.

PLAs = Product Listing Ads

Play has begun to do real work.

Plausible impossibilities are more acceptable than implausible possibilities.

Plenty of babies in that bathwater

Plenty of people might not be good at something themselves, but they know what’s good.

Poetry is what gets lost in the translation.

Point of view is worth 80 IQ points. (Alan Kay)

Point the camera at the money.

Pokemon:  a Jamaican proctolought

Politics are more dangerous than war, for in war you are only killed once.

Politics is for losers.  Business is for those who can get things done.

Popular theatre:  It wants to tell us a truth that we already know or a falsehood we want to believe in.

Portmanteau – “Classting” – combo of “class” and “meeting”

Potential counts for nothing until it's realized.

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

Power in a motorcycle is like revenge.  You never get enough until you get too much.

Power is a function of value added—if you don’t add value to your employees, you’re ignored.

Power is delicate-you must handle it carefully.

Power is like the skin of a leopard.  Two people can't sit on a single spot.

Power is more important than dignity.

Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.

Power is nothing without control.

Power is when your circle of influence is greater than your circle of control.

Practice doesn’t make perfect; practice makes permanent.

Pragmatism – an account of the way people think.

Praise by name, criticize by category.

Pray, as if everything depended on God, act as if everything depended on you.

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.

Pray for the grace of accuracy

Preaching patience in an impatient age

Precise execution is as important as precise strategy.

Precision guesswork.

Predicting rain doesn't count.  Building arks does.

Predicting the future based on the past is a fool’s game.

Preferring punctuality to productivity

Pre-K to gray

Premature pliability, agreeableness, so that the underlying stubbornness is never touched.

Preparation is everything.

Presentation is as important as context.

President of me and my friends

Presume not that I am the thing I was.

Preternatural talent depends on preternatural ruthlessness

Pretty is what it's about.

Preventing errors isn’t always cheaper than fixing them. (depends on nature of the work)

Price might make a sale, but quality and service make a customer.

Pricing transparency is to a dealer what daylight is to a vampire.

Pride goes before a fall.

Primum non nocere.  (First, do no harm.)

Printed lyrics of a folk song are like a photograph of a bird in flight.

Privacy is a technical, economic and aesthetic inconvenience.

Problem with recovery of seriously depressed person is that they’re finally organized enough to carry something out.

Process is more important than outcome.

Producers peddling their scripts were just dogs with bones in their mouths that they couldn’t let go of.

Producing is an invisible art.  If you're any good at it, you leave no fingerprints.

Producing results, not predicting results.

Productivity gains are the foundation of prosperity.

Productivity growth is sustainable when driven by creativity, risk-taking, innovation and new technology.  It is fleeting when it is driven simply by downsizing and longer hours.

Productivity-the real ability to do something combined with the desire to do it.

Productivity should be about producing more with less rather than more with more.

Products are not released, they escape.

Profit is like the horizon; it always recedes as you get closer.

Profit is not the objective of a business.  The objective is to provide a service or product that's good enough for people to pay you a profit for providing it.

Profit-proof

Profitless prosperity

Profusion of confusion

Program passionates

Progress depends on the belief that things can always be better.

Progress grows out of motion.

Progress is not merely doing away with what is bad, it is replacing the best with something better.

Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.

Progress, not perfection

Project management:  careful planning, followed by flawed execution, rescued by heroic effort as the deadlines loom.

Prolonged life has ruined more men than it ever made.

Promises always come with peril.

Proof point pudding (Ann Winblad)

Propeller heads.

Protect me from what I want.

Protect the thing that allows you to do what you do.

Proud but not happy.

Psychoanalyst:  why do you hate me?  I haven’t done anything to help you?

Public money drives out private money.

Publicity is selling what you have – Marketing is selling what you don’t have. (The art of the tease.)

Pure scientists have become more detached from the mundane needs of humanity, and applied scientists have become more attached to immediate profitability.

Purity of Heart:  To will one thing, to sell all that you have, and take up your cross.

Purpose without performance is just a dream.

Purveyors of false demand.

Put a rookie into the line-up every year.

Put quality ahead of schedule and cost.

Put your best people on your biggest problems

Put on your big girl panties and deal with it.

Put your hands on some available object and make something new.

Put your heart where your mouth is.

Put yourself on the line.

Pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves.